Sue flew, new flue.

I was half hour late getting to John Lennon airport to collect my first mate from her IOM red-eye flight, a lorry had turned over on the sliproad at junction 15 on the M6 shedding its 35-ton load of fridges, this meant a detour for me to join the motorway at Junction 17. 

We stopped off at Salthouse dock in Liverpool for breakfast aboard our friend's dutch barge before making our way back to FL - with home-smoked salmon and cheese, marmalade and pasties. 😋

That afternoon we had our first cruise of the season, to Anglo-Welsh hire base at Great Haywood, they would be fabricating and fitting a new flue to the stove the following morning.

Entrance to the Staffs and Worcester canal from the Trent and Mersey.

The following day we had lunch aboard FL with our mate Roly after aborting a trip to the canalside cafe whose outside seating area was rammed full of patrons enjoying the sunshine and food. Roly had driven up from Wales to have a catch-up bringing along Welsh cider and Bara Brith cake. 😋

Later we had a three-hour cruise to Burston where we were surprised to find we had one of the best stretches of this canal to ourselves for the night.

In the morning I went to help a stricken vessel that had pulled in because of overheating. The raw water inlet feed to the engine (she was rather an old gal) had become blocked, with the aid of my Heath Robinson copper tube and flexible hose the obstruction was blown back out into the canal. The happy crew continued on their way towards the Kennet & Avon canal.

New tiles

 I've been waiting patiently in the marina for Sue to tear herself away from the little Manxman and join me, her flight is now booked and I will collect her from Liverpool next week. She will be leaving the island just as they come out off the latest lockdown having eradicated cases of Covid 19 from the community for the third time in a year.

I've just finished reading ' The Failures of State' written by two award-winning Sunday Times investigative journalists, it's about the pandemic and the fatal mistakes this dithering government made to allow Covid 19 to get out of control and how the UK went from one of the best-prepared nations in the world to one of the worst.  

In between reading, there are always jobs to be done on a boat, FL had faired well through her 6-month lay up, having friends on the marina to check on her and air her from time to time had helped.

One job has been tiling, I have never liked the kitchen tiles, after living with them for the last 8 years it was time they came off.

New tap fitted too.

The kitchen was further brightened by changing the cheap Chinese eBay LED bulbs to superior lumen items from Bedazzeled the improvement is astonishing. 

Leaving the Island

The ferry had technical issues with its starboard engine 10 mins out of Heysham port. The ferry is not allowed to enter the port on one engine, so we hung around for nearly two hours while engineers fixed the problem.

 The Ben My Chree winding in Heysham port